Chapter 10 - a new country

I have to catch my breath. After all that waiting it was such a rush to get on, and I only just made it. I don’t think I’ve ever had to wait so long to get on any flight, even in my backpacking days.

My legs had gotten stiff from so much sitting and waiting in the departure lounge. Getting older is a humbling experience. On the one hand, it’s nice to know oneself better, see patterns, habits, consider weaknesses of old now more like strengths. When I was in high school I was secretly convinced I was quite brilliant, then very, very talented in my early twenties, becoming merely witty a few years later. Now I’d be happy to be considered intelligent. On the other hand, I could not imagine sleeping on a hard bench again.

With no book shop and the airport newsagents long since shut, I’d read everything I had brought with me and was debating as to whether or not I’d get up and take yet another stroll around the concourse. Airports and their lounges are strange places. No one lives there, there’s no pressure to stay. Having a ticket is the way out. Yet I’ve always felt comfortable in airports. Just as I had decided to get up and walk versus stare into space, a body suddenly loomed near me and a pleasant female voice asked, “May I sit here?”

I looked up with an assenting smile to see a very attractive woman I took to be about 60, but who I found out later was 74. She was dressed head to toe in cream, her suit well fitting and exquisitely tailored, with modern, black rectangular glasses offset by a short, stylish haircut. I’ve always been inordinately fond of red hair on women and hers glowed. I guess growing up with my sisters both being red heads made it familiar in a good way. One generally sees red hair on an older woman as jarring and garish, but on her it looked superb.

“I love your outfit – you look fabulous,” she said to me. “Those shoes are to die for.”

At that point I thought any words of a complimentary nature I said to her would sound parrot-like, but I’ve learned to say them when I feel them, so I did anyway. She laughed brightly and said, “I see the ‘mutual admiration society’ is all present and accounted for. Where are you going?”

“Off to some beach to lie around like a barnacle and ‘rest’.”

I felt a slight grimace touch my face while I said this so added, “To be honest I have no idea why I’m going.”

She said, “So why are you going?”

“It was a gift from my boss and colleagues. They think I work too hard and for my birthday they are sending me off for a week of ‘fun in the sun’.”

“Happy Birthday! 35? 40?"


"48."


"You don't look it.”

“The ‘mutual admiration society’ thanks the honourable member to her right.”

She laughed again, then said, “‘Fun in the sun’. Who came up with that banal slogan?”

“Well,” I said, trying not to sound like an ungrateful recipient, “who knows? Maybe I’ll be surprised and love it. Or something exciting and unexpected will happen there. It’s happened before. Now what about you? Where are you off to?”

She beamed. “Paris! To visit an old school chum and do some serious shopping. And maybe meet the man of my dreams.”

“Now that sounds like a real holiday! Is there a specific man in mind?”

“Oh no, just any man.”

We shared a laugh. “What sort of work do you do that your colleagues think you do too much of?”

I didn’t want to make assumptions based on her age, so asked her if she’d heard of Google Earth, of which she had not. I dug out my laptop and opened it up to show her my favourite places, the places I visit most online, the North Pole, New York City, Victoria Falls, wherever I am right now, various buildings in the Middle East. She was most impressed. “Isn’t that amazing! What does a Google Manager do exactly? What qualifications do you have for doing something like this? Where have you been? Why are some photos clearer than others? What does ‘GIS’ stand for? How fascinating!”

I enthusiastically explained about intelligent data management, loading structures and seamless flythoughs. Also the reasons behind it, at least those reasons as far as I was concerned. “Even people in a poor, third world country can now see what the rest of the world looks like. For free. It’s a portal.” Seeing her look I added, “Oh yes, third world countries have access. You’d be surprised. It’s the landlines they don’t have. There are cell phones ringing in villages without electricity.”

“You must travel a lot.”

“Yes, I often have to look at the hotel pen to see what city I am in!”

“Where is home, then?”

“That’s a good question. Where is home for anyone really? Where we were born? Where our families are? Where we are living now? Is it a physical location or a psychological situation? Does the concept of home mean different things to different people? Is home portable, a bag containing a change of clothes? Or is it tied to citizenship? I wonder if someone born in China is always Chinese. What if their parents were born in India? What if you are born in one country but spend your entire life in another? Is it possible to be born in the wrong country? Maybe my home is my suitcase. Perhaps our native country is like a suitcase. What we carry inside it is our lives. We go across the world or across the street and see images of ourselves reflected back at us. Everyone wears the same clothes, buys the same gadgets. We are global citizens like it or not, recognize it or not.”

There was a long pause, and I realized I had been talking out loud. Good lord, what would this woman think?

She slowly answered, as if having given my ridiculous rant serious thought, “For me home is where the Christmas tree is.” I could have kissed her.

“Well you obviously love your work, I don’t wonder you don’t want to take a break from something so engrossing. Whatever next?” she asked rhetorically, but I had an answer myself, mischievously saying, “Right now, we’re working on Google Ocean. You will be able to see depths and landmarks. Imagine being able to track the depth of something like the Mariana trench.” I scrolled over to show her what I was talking about since many people had never heard of this deepest part of the world.

“My goodness, think of it. I imagine marine biologists would be all over this.”

“And seismic geologists, teachers, engineers… It’s like a new age of exploration. Those old maps of the world showed wild sea creatures, many imaginary. Now you can see the real sea and track real creatures. And after the oceans project there’s another one I like to call ‘Celestial Google’. All the stars and galaxies mapped, our place in the solar system placed in perspective ”

“I’d like to see you go and get those photos!”

“Actually it’s not so farfetched. There are satellites and spacecraft even now taking photos of space that could be stitched together in an accessible form like this. Imagine someday seeing what Mars looks like up close.”

“Can you show me Paris?”

I scrolled over towards Paris. “Look, here’s the Eiffel tower.”

“Oh it’s 3D. That’s a bit giddy, I’ve never been good with heights.”

I scrolled away toward the Louvre and the Opera, asking. “What about your hotel or a favourite café – what would you like to see?”

She asked if I knew where a much loved shop, Fauchon, was.

“Fauchon! That’s one of my favourite places, too. Every time I went to Paris I would go there to stock up on ‘crème de marron’.”

“Are you a fan of chestnut paste?”

“Not really but Ha-…” I bite down on the name. “My husband loved it.”

“Loved it past tense? Does he not love it anymore?”

“I can’t image that being possible,” smiling in spite of my sudden feelings, the speed of one spontaneous syllable bringing up an entire relationship. “The past tense refers to my husband, I suppose you’d say.”

“Separated?”

Good word, I thought. “Yes.”

“Willingly?”

Interesting choice. “Not really.”

I saw her eyes momentarily flicker to see the band of gold on my right hand and appreciated the fact that she didn’t refer to it. It’s been years but I cannot bring myself to consider its removal. Perhaps, in my mind, it’s not really over.

“Children?”

“No. Unfortunately.” That usually prevents more questions.

“So you are traveling alone?”

“Yes.” My fingers lightly flitted over the keyboard. Why do I feel like a schoolgirl being interrogated over some window that got broken?

“Too bad you couldn’t have had a girlfriend or something to go on this trip with you to make it more fun.”

“I don’t have too many friends who aren’t either mothers unwilling or unable to leave their families during the school year, workaholics like me, or who are living in other countries and not able to make it. Everyone is too busy.”

“I suppose spending all your time working doesn’t really allow for much of a social life does it? I used to be an OR nurse, and I’d be on call every other weekend, and usually did shift work the rest of the time which meant going out for dinners or weekends was impossible. I suppose it didn’t help my marriages either!”

“Marriages plural?”

“Yes, I’ve been divorced three times and widowed twice. Can you believe it? A young thing like me? To paraphrase the old saying ‘to be widowed once is unfortunate, but to be widowed twice is to be irresponsible’.”

I was struck by her breeziness. “That sounds so sad, to be widowed twice. You don’t seem to be too upset to talk about it,” I said, hoping that didn’t sound accusing. I was curious. How could someone who had suffered the loss of two men she loved enough to marry be so cavalier about it?

“Well, it was devastating at the time of course, but pain disperses over time. Life is for the living. You have to go out and make your life, find happiness wherever and however you can.”

“That’s an enviable sentiment.”

“You don’t agree? You’ve no doubt been through a share of heartache, don’t you find the best thing to do is to move ahead? Ever onward. Go west young woman. Etcetera.”

“My mind says ‘yes’, but my heart isn’t such a quick learner. I have a hard time getting past the pain, of living beyond the memory. Real life can never live up. I can never make it live up.” I felt a sting behind my eyes, so fussed with my computer, bending down to put it away. ‘Do not cry,’ I told myself the usual mantra. ‘Do NOT cry. You are an educated woman with several letters after your surname and miles under your belt. You can afford to buy Prada. You choose to buy fair trade. You have not felt the need to prove yourself to anyone for a long time. Do not do something so juvenile as cry!’

There was a moment of silence, and then she said softly. “You sound like one of the world’s romantics. Always looking for something. Love, probably. Or peace. Or a sense of self.”

Honestly, feisty woman with their uncanny ability to see right through you are downright dangerous. And yet I always seem drawn to them. It’s so easy to open up to them somehow, like talking to a mirror, or a cartoon superhero.

“You have obviously filled your life with marvelous work. Work that you believe in. You have friends, probably family, perhaps sex, I don’t know, that’s not the sort of thing a 74 year old grandmother asks these days,” (which is how I found out she was 74). “I think your boss and colleagues have the exactly right idea after all.”

I sat up and looked up at her with surprise.

“Oh maybe not the place itself, but the idea. To send you out there to find more than work. Fun. Happiness. Love. What are you looking for?”

People were always sending me places, I thought. “I don’t know what I’m looking for really. All those. And neither. Something.” Idiot. I sound 14. I forced a laugh. “That’s the sort to thing my mother hated, mumbling without really saying anything at all.”

“Is your mother still alive? What is your relationship with her like? I couldn’t stand mine. Old busybody, disapproving of all my men. Not without merit of course. Even the dead ones were deadbeats. Before they died of course. But just because she was right doesn’t mean she was allowed. It drove me crazy to hear her tell me I was throwing away my life on some jerk.”

“Yes, my mother is still very much alive. She will outlive most cockroaches I think.”

I suddenly thought how dreadful that sounds. Thankfully she seemed to know what I meant.

“Tough cookie?”

“Very. Wiry. And healthy as anything. Oh, we’ve had our rough patches, but I think down deep we understand each other very well. She tells me I shouldn’t need external things to define myself. Children, work. ‘You can’t replace what’s been and gone,’ she says. Most of the time I wonder if she’s not still saying things she thinks I want to hear. She thinks I am reclusive and bury myself in my work and ‘why can’t I just recognize the right person when I seem him and stay with him’. That sort of thing. This holiday would meet with her approval, although then she’d no doubt go on about how silly it is to be gadding around in the sun.” I laughed. Mothers and daughters. We’re all the same.

“‘Gadding about’, my goodness there’s a phrase I haven’t heard for a while! Still, a little gadding is no bad thing, if you can do it on your own terms. And she is right about finding the right person and staying with him. Unfortunately the right person for me was in grade school and we couldn’t do anything about it. He moved away when I was thirteen and I suppose I’ve carried a torch ever since. Maybe that’s why all my other men were jerks. Subconsciously I was undermining my relationships. Perhaps I’m not alone in that?”

I kept my eyes on my lap but felt her look at me. She seems to know just what nail to hit and then gives it a mighty wallop. Scary. I said lightly but sincerely, “First loves eh? Nothing else lives up to them, does it? They are elusive perfection.”

I didn’t really expect an answer, nor want one come to think of it, but I got it anyway. “Or are they? How is it that we only seem to remember the sunny childhood summers, long evenings barefoot in grass? Never the rainy days inside, of which there must have been many. I’m willing to bet that if you were somehow able to transport yourself back in time to that ‘perfect’ time with that ‘perfect’ first love you’d be shocked at how imperfect it – and he - was. Time is the culprit – time and our selective memories. Why do women have more than one baby? Why do men scale another mountain having lost a toe to frostbite? Why do people run marathons, fall in love? Pain fades. Perfection is inside – your attitude to life, your sense of achievement, your happiness. Being happy and in the moment is the epitome of perfection. And we have the capacity to realize perfection every minute of every day. Pity not more of us do.”

“But, where does one get the courage for that? To erase the mistakes made along the way. How can one undo a mistake?”

The tannoy suddenly made its presence known with the usual muffled effect whereby one could only hear certain words such as ‘important’ and ‘immediately’ and ‘all passengers’. Somehow my companion discerned her own flight and gate number in the strangled sound.

“Oh dear there’s my flight. And I fear I’ve left our conversation in an awkward place.” She suddenly put a kind hand on my arm, which forced me to look at her. Looking hard into my eyes she said to me, “You deserve to be happy you know. Allow yourself to go out and seek what makes you happy.”

She walked away and I sat there feeling a little stunned. Where had I heard those words before? I worried my handkerchief into a little ball while I vacillated, then closed my eyes to see the inner light bulb more clearly. Then, without another thought I stood up, gathered my things and walked purposefully to the airline desk.

“I’d like to exchange my ticket for a different destination if I may please. I’m quite prepared to pay the difference.”

“Yes madam. Where would you like to fly?”

“Dubai,” I said, and then hastened to the gate, clutching my boarding pass.